The Great Agnostic Read Online Free Page B

sought—and failed—to obtain the party’s nomination for the governorship in 1868. His reputation as a religious skeptic was already established in Illinois (though not yet nationally) because of remarks like those in his address at Galesburg. In 1882, Ingersoll would look back on his unsuccessful bid for the Illinois governorship in a series of interviews responding to the hostile commentaries of the Reverend Thomas DeWitt Talmage, a prominent Presbyterian minister second only to Henry Ward Beecher as a renowned clerical orator of that period. “Mr. Talmage says that Christianity must be true, because an infidel cannot be elected to office,” Ingersoll noted. “Now, suppose that enough infidels should happen to settle in one precinct to elect one of their own number to office; would that prove that Christianity was
not
true in that precinct?” 16 Talmage had argued that the inability of any American who disavowed belief in God to be elected to high office proved the truth of Christianity, and he used Ingersoll’s defeat for the gubernatorialnomination as an example. To this Ingersoll replied:
    I presume that Mr. Talmage really thinks that I was extremely foolish to avow my real opinions. … But I was an infidel, and admitted it. Surely, I should not be held in contempt by Christians for having made the admission. I was not a believer in the Bible, and I said so. I was not a Christian, and I said so. I was not willing to receive the support of any man under a false impression. … According to the ethics of Mr. Talmage I made a mistake, and this mistake is brought forward as another evidence of the inspiration of the Scriptures. If I had only been elected Governor of Illinois,—that is to say, if I had been a successful hypocrite, I might now be basking in the sunshine of this gentleman’s respect. … There are many men now in office who, had they pursued a nobler course, would be private citizens. Nominally, they are Christians; actually, they are nothing; and this is the combination that generally insures political success. 17
    It is worth noting that Ingersoll’s last observation remains true at the national level today, although nominal Jews have also entered the ranks of the politically acceptable. Only one congressman, Democratic Representative PeteStark of California, is a self-acknowledged, unapologetic atheist, although there are now a fair number of legislators in the House and Senate who, practicing their own version of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” simply avoid discussing their religious beliefs in public. Ingersoll was not even willing to remain silent.

VII
Death and Afterlife
    You had better live well and die cursing than live badly and die praying.
    â€”RGI, “The Death Test”
    In the summer of 1899, intensifying pain in his chest and shortness of breath, caused by the heart disease he had lived with for many years, forced Robert Ingersoll to end his career as a lawyer and lecturer. His last two public appearances were concerned, in different ways, with the rights of women. In early June, ten weeks before his death, he made his impassioned statement, in a speech in Boston before the American Free Religious Association, about the need for women to possess the means to control their own bodies and decide for themselves whether they wanted to marry or become mothers. Later in the month, he appeared in his last court case, in which he represented a widow challenging her husband’s will on grounds that he had concealed the true value of his assets. The opposingattorney expressed skepticism about whether a seventy-five-year-old man—the age of his client when he became engaged to his fifty-five-year-old future wife—could have truly been in love. (The stenographer’s notes do not make clear exactly why the attorney thought the depth or shallowness of a man’s love had any bearing on the validity of his will.) “I